As the mass­es become engrossed in the vir­tu­al and aug­ment­ed worlds, con­sumers are increas­ing­ly find­ing that these new real­i­ties are as lim­it­ed as they are expan­sive. Too often as mar­keters and devel­op­ers we’re restrict­ing our think­ing to AR and VR, even defin­ing them in their own lanes, keep­ing them siloed, instead of allow­ing them to build on each oth­er to cre­ate a new kind of holis­tic expe­ri­ence.

If we want to tru­ly infuse these tech­nolo­gies into the main­stream, we have to find a way to build past the lim­i­ta­tions of AR and VR to cre­ate a mul­ti-dimen­sion­al, Mixed Real­i­ty (MR). Here’s how we can get there.

Combine Technology With Context

Too often when we work close­ly with a new tech­nol­o­gy, we get so entrenched with that spe­cif­ic advance­ment that we often end up with our head in the sand, for­get­ting the con­text around the expe­ri­ences we want to devel­op and what tech­nol­o­gy will best deliv­er it. There is noth­ing inher­ent­ly wrong with AR or VR, indi­vid­u­al­ly each plat­form offers real poten­tial, but by focus­ing so close­ly on either, we start to exist in a tech­nol­o­gy vac­u­um, ignor­ing the cru­cial part of the puz­zle where we look to how that tech­nol­o­gy fits with­in our world and the expe­ri­ence we want to deliv­er. MR offers many advan­tages in cre­at­ing inno­v­a­tive new expe­ri­ences, but is too often over­looked.

What Is MR?

Think of it this way, AR essen­tial­ly takes stan­dard real­i­ty and aug­ments it with over­laid images which his­tor­i­cal­ly have been more inter­rup­tive than immer­sive (think Google Glass) and VR is a closed and beau­ti­ful­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ence but these expe­ri­ences are often lim­it­ed in appli­ca­tion because the take the user out of their actu­al envi­ron­ment. MR is both an over­lay of images on your actu­al envi­ron­ment wher­ev­er you are, but deliv­ers the capa­bil­i­ty to cre­ate ful­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ences with inter­ac­tion capa­bil­i­ty that is nat­ur­al, intu­itive, and pre­cise. Think of the MR devel­oped ver­sion of Minecraft where the play­ers build their worlds in the actu­al room they are stand­ing in instead of a vir­tu­al screen.

Merge The Development Process

We hear time and time again that col­lab­o­ra­tion is a key dri­ver of suc­cess and cre­ativ­i­ty, so it’s curi­ous that too often com­pa­nies have not adopt­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tive process for how expe­ri­ences are built and where new tech­nol­o­gy can sig­nif­i­cant­ly impact the qual­i­ty or func­tion­al­i­ty of those expe­ri­ences. Devel­op­ers and cre­ative orga­ni­za­tions need to drop the assem­bly line think­ing for how prod­ucts and ser­vices go from ideation to devel­op­ment to dis­tri­b­u­tion and into con­sumers lives.

Start­ing with an unbri­dled obses­sion for the user and the expe­ri­ence they need in the world and then what tech­nol­o­gy can deliv­er is the right place to start, unfor­tu­nate­ly too often the IT team, mar­ket­ing team (and every­thing in between) rarely con­fide in each oth­er, result­ing in a final prod­uct that isn’t made with a con­sumer in mind. When it comes to use of VR, AR, and MR, we need to bring our teams togeth­er to ensure that we are think­ing about the con­sumer from the begin­ning of the devel­op­ment process. With this cross col­lab­o­ra­tion, we can bring an open mind­ed­ness to how we use the best of or even a com­bi­na­tion of these tech­nolo­gies (and per­haps many oth­ers) to imag­ine and cre­ate mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences that con­sumers can’t live with­out.

Assign Dedicated Teams

To tru­ly make a good prod­uct or expe­ri­ence that will bring some­thing new to the table, you can’t skimp. You have to make the com­mit­ment to have as part of your team, spe­cial­ists on the new tech­nolo­gies. Even if you are keep­ing an open mind about how you are col­lab­o­rat­ing and stay­ing aware of the con­texts you are work­ing with­in, there’s still no replace­ment for real experts in the tech­nol­o­gy and the inno­va­tion that can result from the learn­ings of tri­al and error inside your teams, not out­sourced.

Set aside a team that is pas­sion­ate about how these tech­nolo­gies can work with one anoth­er to devel­op sys­tems that can be applied in the real world. Rest assured, if you aren’t devot­ing a team to new tech­nolo­gies, some­one else will be and in a space where it’s tough to stay one step ahead of the game, that can mean trou­ble.